#SixONSaturday- Reaching for the Sky!

 Not everything in the garden is growing tall and reaching for the sky, but two real favourites: cardoons and fennel are both towering so high that it's hard to photograph them. I love them both, they are covered in bees of all sorts which is also a good sign. It's been a week when I seem to have been waiting for a bit more rain, everywhere else seems to have had downpours, here it wasn't until yesterday that the fuchsias in the front garden looked happier because they'd had rain rather than a watering can of water. But let's get onto the six:

Fennel has self seeded all over the garden because it's in my home made compost, and presumably blows its seeds around. I've got it popping up in lots of bed, taller in some than others. This particular one is about 10 feet tall. As I look out of the bedroom window in the morning, there's the fennel in one bed, and to the left of that, the cardoons which are looking fabulous just now. They have had to be staked, like lots of things, but not very successfully. Some parts of the plant seem better than others at standing upright.. I maybe should have divided it in the spring, but it looked like one plant then, rather than about six now.

I'm including this Crocosmia because it's 'Hellfire' rather than 'Lucifer' and although the plant is much smaller than 'Lucifer' there's an edge to the red that I like.

This is some unknown summer flowering clematis which gets full marks and makes me even more certain that I want to replace this small amount of trellis with a massive one before next summer so it can spread even more.

This is a lovely plant bought on a plant tour from an unknown nursery. It was bought about 4 years ago, hasn't increased in size, but it does reappear every year for a week.

and lastly another clematis rambling though plum and apple trees, it has spread a long way, I love the shape and colour of the flowers, and the way it seems to be able to outrun bindweed.

I'm off on a garden tour of gardens in the south east, around Bury St.Edmunds, next week, so looking forward to getting new ideas and buying more plants of course. Now over to The Propagator to see what his six are this week. Do have a look and consider joining this great gardening community.